Pirates on the Seas of time is a grand trick! It was an odd time riff but it felt very accessibile - that opening riff came very naturally - startin with 7 - but pairing with a 9 - I then added the descending chromatic 3rd and whoa also 9. All feel, I didn’t think about time - I counted afterward and realized I could tell Erick we’ll we’re playing 7/9 but really it’s 16 - so roll the 8s bro. That clicked f'ing instantly and sounds rad. The core riff is non-commital 1-5-7 but jumping the minor 3rd to D indicates the B minor - then complement with 4ths. I had to write simple lyrics that could also be rhythmic here - Coming into the second section I wanted to build jazz chords in Bm without using the Bm, I love that math. From there we can easily jump to switch keys to F#m - I had the really killer bass riff I recorded - that took a while to get right - very Geddy-ish run. Finally we drop to Em over the C and D major sevenths and just work the bend, whammy, wah - falling into a ghostly dark pirate space in Bm. This also was a bit new - for the last 4 years with John - there was so much material - improvisational sections were often counterproductive. For this section I wanted to listen to each stay on target and build the fabric. We were committing to being free but conversing in an improvisational space jam - band shit. So 4 and unrushed - but it had to be heavy - we’re talking deathless lich pirates here – death is the beginning. So the goal was to just listen and carefully build layers, improvised but developing toward a thematic fabric. The irony of this darkness is that we’re really basically in A major. Once we found our sea legs - hehe we could naturally descend back to the third vocal section with that descent into darkness F#m chord. Here I juxtapose the B minor pentatonic opposite the A major runs. This entire section ended up coming just feeling easy, had a nice flow of complimentary sounds - intentionally leaving room, the lyrics were fun as hell and here we are ghost buccaneers floating in the dark barren wastes of wormholes and time vortexes.
From here the chordal construction descends to Em for the eyepatch - and then structure returns - we build back to speed on off the B and D with the hard stops - back home to the land of the living. The lyrics also came easy punchy live - transitional and flighty crossing and just something god awful heavy but also tongue in cheek over the dark space. The close just stacks for drama - Root 4, 5, Octave over John and we lock back to the beginning. It is a long, fakey technical but heavy AF - orchestrated but the fabric section is different every time - this is throwback music - how I wrote for the trio. We have been absolutely killing this live - people love it. Those seas of time jams are a little different every time - it’s a real 1970 vibe. Hope you dig it!